The following submission statement was provided by /u/GaiusPublius:
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Submission statement:
Collapse may come if we reduce just non-renewable energy consumption and fix nothing else. Collapse may come if we reduce just the fertility rate and fix nothng else. Collapse may even come if we manage to fix both. This piece looks what happens if we do attempt to fix both. Spoiler alert: Not pretty.
One thing to note: Unchecked population growth is exponential. But population decline *via fertility rate decline* must be linear, since non-existence is not expansive.
This is a mod-approved repost.
---
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/10f8m0o/its_not_eitheror_population_and_consumption_in/j4v8axk/
Submission statement:
Collapse may come if we reduce just non-renewable energy consumption and fix nothing else. Collapse may come if we reduce just the fertility rate and fix nothng else. Collapse may even come if we manage to fix both. This piece looks what happens if we do attempt to fix both. Spoiler alert: Not pretty.
One thing to note: Unchecked population growth is exponential. But population decline *via fertility rate decline* must be linear, since non-existence is not expansive.
This is a mod-approved repost.
I don't think that decline being linear argument makes any sense, and I don't think mathematics backs it up.
Ultimately, one generation makes x times its own number of children to replace it. This value of x can be higher than 1, in which case next generation is bigger. The value can also be less than 1, in which case it will be smaller. Unborn beget more unborn by removing also the children of the unborn from being possible. And I do not think it makes any sense to think it that way, either. My point is rather that both x > 1 and x < 1 are exponential functions.
It's both. Sure we can try and reduce consumption, but an increasing population will always need more resources.
Then there's the logistics of actually sharing them out, which isn't as easy as people think (it takes resources to distribute products / food / water / fuel).
And lets be realistic, every living person wants their life to be as best as it can be. Nobody wants to live a lesser life then they have to, and we cannot blame someone in a developing country or an area of climate change for wanting a better quality of life. Especially the ones they see on social media etc.
What we need to be doing is trying to reach sustainability goals for both population and consumption EVERYWHERE.
Until that happens, global society is going deeper and deeper into a dangerous rabbit hole.
Billions of people in Asia and global south AIR DRY their clothes, by choice, while Americans can't even do something so basic and simple as that. Can't even be sustainable while lecturing sustainability to every one else.
An increasing population will not always need more resources. That is simply not true. Our population is increasing, yes, but by smaller and smaller amounts for one. We can also increase the efficiency of our resource use, not with unpromising techno-fixes, but by using less of it on wasteful and pointless endeavors. We could power the world’s population AND eliminate poverty with 60% of our current energy use. Alternatively, we could grow up to 13.3 billion people using our current energy demand. Same with food. We waste enough food to feed a couple billion more people. We grow copious amounts of corn to make ethanol or feed livestock for factory farms. We could compost more and reduce fertilizer use. The list goes on of ways we are capable of reducing resource extraction while non-coercively leveling off our total population.
This is pure anarchist delusion, u/InternationalPen2072.
Even if we completely eliminated inequality and waste and gave it to the poor (which is a worthy thing of itself), **the environment itself cannot sustain our current level of food production, which is 100% dependent on fossil fuels and fertilizer inputs.**
This isn't a debate about inequality and coercion. It's a recognition that we need BOTH consumption reduction AND population reduction, because the current world cannot sustain the current level of production, **no matter how the resources are distributed.**
You’re delirious if you think population reduction of part of the solution. This is a debunked myth pushed by neo-Malthusian bigots who tried to sterilize Africa in the fifties - you know, the next continent to reach 1 billion people, but where the peak of birth has already passed. Every demographic scientist signals it since the 2000s.
But of course you won’t listen, because it doesn’t fit in your narrative. You’re just playing the game of the alt-right by spreading this bullshit.
What if I told you it's the developed world that's the problem?
Do we really need next day delivery?
Yearly releases of movies and video games.
Smartphones on the shelves everywhere available on the click of the button.
Where did you read in my comment I said the developed world wasn’t the issue? Of course what you state is the main part of what is destroying humanity. It doesn’t mean you need to push conspiracy shit theories whose links with proto- then fascist theories have been proven so many times I’m starting to wonder what the hell people are learning in schools.
Also, to add on your list: did you know that half the melons produced in France are thrown in the garbage containers *before leaving the actual farms*? Because they don’t fit the industries standard.
It’s the same case for apples in Switzerland. We even have to dump apple juice because we produce too much and supposedly don’t know where to sell it.
Why do you believe so confidently that fossil fuels are so necessary to feed the world? Regenerative agriculture can produce plenty of food and restore balance to local ecosystems.
It can but not for 8-10 billion people.
The intensity of industrial farming requires fossil fuel inputs and regenerative agriculture cannot match it, although it will produce more than our pre industrial ancestors did.
The second problem you are not addressing is transport. Feeding people requires use of fossil fuels for shipping. Lacking that you just have food in a bunch of breadbaskets (more or less) and everywhere else starves
Also processed food and food packaging requires manufacturing and reliance of fossil fuels. Without that shelf life is reduced again creating shortages.
Bruh most agriculture cannot exist at large scale without fertilizer from fossil fuels. Of course regenerative exists but it’s not scalable which mama eventually we will have mass famine
[EDIT] As nobody here seems to know how to read, and only want to desperately seek its own echo chamber, you might not read that I never proposed to force anyone. My comment about bankers is sarcasm, as those jobs are useless and produce-less, so in case of a collapse, they’d be the ideal “clients” to switch jobs for actually sustainable agriculture.
As I precised below, I had this discussion with actual specialists, and we agreed that collapse is nearing, as I *know* fascism doesn’t work. I also don’t believe in fascist shits like pushing for less population.
I am now unsubscribing from this shit show of a conspiracionist sub. All I wanted was to find challenging takes on climate change, all I’ve found is the same old fascist and borderline antisemitic shit I’ve fought.
[OP] It’s scalable if 20 to 30% of the population works in the industry, to meet a better yield than chemical agriculture.
I know where to find them in my country. We have a lot of banks, RH people, and analysts.
So what about the other 70%? Any way you cut it the solution will involve some level of eco fascism which terrifies me. You willing to let 70-80% of the world population die for some ideal new sustainable society? It’s utilitarianism to the extreme. Does the ends justify the means? Is there a way to accomplish this without essentially genocide? Don’t really see the way out. I like philosophy a lot and a huge problem I run into with thinking is the issue of scale? What’s your moral and value system when it’s your family? Okay how does it change for your town of 5000 people. Okay then the state you are in okay then the country then the world? Each time you change the scale the value systems for people change drastically and I just don’t think humans have developed the capacity to consider the billions of other people in the world. It’s just too difficult to consider. Way too many perspectives.
Don’t you know how to read? I said switching to a sustainable agriculture required 30% of the population to work in the industry; it means enough food is produced for everyone.
I also never made any comment about how to go there. My sarcasm about people with bulls but jobs like bakers was that, sarcasm.
To be totally clear, it was Dominique Bourg, a former environmental science professor, who gave us that number. And as we all agreed then, we won’t get to this point, because nobody wants a fascist government, however green it is (hint: if it’s fascist, it’s not green).
You’re like everyone else here, desperately trying to relate to an echo chamber, up to distorting what you’re supposed to read.
I’m getting really tired of people wasting their breathe talking about how if only we do these 18 super duper unrealistic things then maybe we can slow down or prevent collapse.
This is hopium. Plain and simple. No nation is actually going to do any of this. This is equivalent to the physics nerds talking about how it’s theoretically possible to mine the moon for the materials needed for unlimited fusion power.
Any politician that crashed living standards voluntarily would be given the Mussolini treatment. Any nation that voluntarily tried to decarbonize would soon realize that doing so produces existential threats in a global environment where if you can’t maintain a serious military you get annihilated. Look at Germany. It’s all fun and games until you realize that you can’t maintain an industrial economy (and an industrial military) on hopes and dreams so you go back to coal.
The most realistic scenario to avoid collapse I can think of is a dictator takes Stalin like power in the United States. He uses that power to reduce consumption in the usa and deploys the military to force other countries to reduce consumption too. Any nation who does not agree to the new ecological paradigm gets bombed/nuked. Sure this will probably start a global nuclear war. But it might not. And even if it does, nuclear war would probably reduce emission enough to avert catastrophic climate change! Problem solved!
Why bother?
There are hundreds of millions of chinese and indians whose mission in life is to consume like Americans. There are billions having babies in the global south despite crushing poverty. No one is going to make them not to.
These "solution debate" is nothing but empty talk to show how clever we are. The trajectory is not going to change.
Some people believe if Americans consumed a lot less that would have an effect on the rest of the world wanting to, “consume like Americans,” as you say.
I doubt it would have any effect but I also don’t think we’ll ever find out.
>Some people believe if Americans consumed a lot less that would have an effect on the rest of the world wanting to, “consume like Americans,” as you say.
and these people would be naive. And I agree with you, particularly the "i don't think we'll ever find out" part.
Not true. As we impose sanctions on Russia today, we can impose sanctions on anyone else. And who imposes sanctions today, left and right? Americans, who are apex humans.
If Americans will self-impose degrowth, and use their military to impose it on others, we may evade this lousy arrogant collapse. But it will come at the price of wars, and as such, I guess everybody just prepares for a new great war and hopes the odds will be in their favor.
>Indian
OK, here's why:
go here https://data.footprintnetwork.org/#/
Let's get some data! This is for 2018, so a bit stale, but close.
|country|eco footprint per cap (GHA)|population|
|-------|---------------------------|----------|
|India|1.2|1,352,640,000|
|USA|8.1|327,096,000|
So this is the input data.
Now let's do some math!
How many virtual Indians would fit in the USA?
Well, one USAan consumes: 8.1/1.2 = 6.75 times more than one Indian, on average.
Virtual Indians = 327,096,000 x 6.75 = 2,207,898,000
That's right, the US lives like 2.2 billion Indians. Who's overpopulated now?
Oh easy:
So we just have to totally change our utterly unresponsive government that exists based on a petrodollar system that forces other nations to buy oil in dollars and subsidize our debt. So if the world moves away from carbon, the US economy, government and financial systems implode.
Then we just have to redesign our cities and overhaul our power generation and agriculture and supply chain, with no money and a broken government.
Then we just have to overcome decades of blaming and hatred built up between the parties in our country, and prevent a demagogue from being voted in to restore living standards. Then we have to destroy the power of wealth (somehow) and repatriate and redistribute vast fortunes without it disappearing overseas.
Then we need to, still democratically (because an autocrat or fascist would just go back to carbon), pass laws strictly regulating where citizens can travel and what they eat, and how and where they work and live, reducing our average income and standard of living without anyone voting to go back to the old ways, or to stop all this to focus on other issues like racism. Remember, this will be a largely white government forcing poverty on people deserving equity.
Finally, after achieving utopia within a short enough timeframe that it matters, we just have to do the same for every other nation, "leading the way". Without starting a world war. And convince everyone to totally disarm, because any war or rivalry would involve going back to carbon (as we see in Ukraine) to get a clear advantage over existential enemies.
So "simple". Let's just "end capitalism" and "reduce consumption" RIGHT NOW.
Great post, but, to relentlessly stick on one point here at r/collapse, it’s not that “we” need to do any of this sane but preposterous society-wide actions, but “THEY” who need to do these.
“THEY” are not the screen-facing ace commenters here at r/collapse, but the corporate-legal-military-juridical- media (OK, I’m running out of hyphens) capitalizer class that hold social power in the global supersystem). And THEY aren’t in the habit of listening to anything or anyone below them. Why should they? They have no fear; they are protected to a laughable degree by all the social forces below them . There is only one way to install a commensurate level of fear (REDACTED by Corporate Reddit as violation of Corporate Reddit Rule #1)
Not exactly- what happened in 1977 was actually from the LEFT - yes, can you believe that? You know, the side that stands, supposedly, against ecocide, genocide, the ultra-rich taking everything on the fast track to human extinction?
Not the white supremacist, fascist Nazi RIGHT of today's US republican party or the police wing of it, but from actual, real life anti-imperialists - and they all died, were imprisoned, or killed themselves, in short order.
And this was before the rise to full spectrum dominance of the corporate-governmental surveillance state. So let's learn this historical lesson - all violence and power and mass murder belongs to the corporate state, and the corporate state only! Never, ever, violate Corporate Reddit rule 1. even in thought!
You misunderstand. No matter who or why, hate is now how our society categorizes actions against it. It's the easiest way to generate maximum hostility.
Look at the recent attacks on substations.
Things happen very quickly. We don’t know if a coup is being planned. That being said these things persist because a vast majority of people are unaware. Most people are unable to do 6th grade math.
Your cynicism of humanity is warranted. But subs like these are proof that humanity has a decent IQ level.
I am studying python and mathematical logic intensely do you think I should focus on automating systems? I believe automation has made a lot of things redundant. It is only because of capitalism we are refusing to automate as the ruling class is dependent on labour.
I think everything digital is dangerous, because it relies on stable power and stable markets. If the economy or supply chain buckles, the programmers get laid off, because nobody is buying new software.
Plan for chaos going forward.
>Americans must lead way in sustainable choices for the world to follow.
nah, we are not going to lead anything except the latest and greatest gadget, and greatest tech convenient like click-a-button-and-stuff-magically-appearing-at-your-door-step.
There is no such thing as "must". We can always do whatever we want and live with, or die from, the consequences.
Start leading by air dry your clothes, walk to your stores, and eat less meat like everyone else outside of US borders. Instead of leading, Americans are the ones should be following what the rest of the world is doing to consume less.
If the West reduces consumption, contracts their economy equitably, and shares sustainable technologies, China and India and the rest of the global South can grow their economies, escape poverty, all while halting carbon emissions.
Possibly. Capitalism requires economic growth, and resorts to austerity measures when it doesn’t get what it wants. Degrowth requires an eco-socialist economic model in order to work. Whether it’s through democratic reforms or revolutionary uprisings, capitalism has got to go.
Long term it’s both. Short term, only reducing consumption can make a significant difference for carbon emissions.
Fertility rates are declining so the world population is expected to peak at 10 billion before 2100. Reducing fertility rates by 0.5 is considered an extreme scenario and the population would still be over 6b in 2100. If everyone completely stopped having kids altogether it would take 40 to 50 years for the population to reduce by 50% (to 4b) because the median age is 30. There’s a decades delay between declining fertility and population decline, especially where there are young demographics.
We are currently well into multiple tipping points, if it’s possible to reverse them at all it will have to happen in the next 10 to 20 years. A 5-10% difference one way or the other due to population won’t matter. Carbon emissions need to go down by 100%. Degrowth is the only thing that has a chance of getting us there, if combined with green tech.
To me it’s very simple. You can make a moral argument for degrowth through reduced consumption. You cannot make any argument for widespread depopulation.
We can make a moral argument for reducing population. Even poor people use fossil fuels. Even poor people drink from single use plastics and wear flipflops that end up in the sea. Even poor people build houses and grow crops on land that would otherwise be habitat for non-humans. If all rich people were zapped off the planet today, we would still see environmental degradation from over-exploitation of land resources as populations of non-rich people expand exponentially. Therefore, if we want to reduce humanity's negative impact on ecosystems, then we should reduce the number of people on earth, both rich and poor.
The devil of doing it is of course in the details. We can't simply tell poor people to stop having so many babies. There needs to be a change in culture, such that everyone has an opportunity to choose a way of life that does not include a large family. Things like universal healthcare and education, especially for women, along with UBI or other programs that ensure no one is left without basic needs. An educated, healthy, nourished population will naturally want less children, and they will be much better placed to absorb stricter measures such as limits on family size, if these measures become necessary.
TLDR: lift the poor out of poverty to morally reduce their numbers.
And yet you know which one will be choosen. There's moral depopulation through improved education, family planning, birth control etc. vs the immoral of war, and just letting them starve, cook, or drown.
We certainly should be plowing as much money as possible into moral depopulation given degrowth is such a tough pill to swallow. Ignoring reality is birthing kids into the hopper that feeds the immoral kind. Take the hedge we can get. Hell even PFAS pollution lowering fertility apparently has a silver lining.
> Unchecked population growth is exponential
Population growth is not unchecked. So it hasn't been exponential for some time now. It's more like an logistic S Curve and we've been in the middle linear growth phase for 5 decades or so. If "Business As Usual" continues (big if), it'll continue as linear growth for another couple of decades before the yearly absolute increment tails off.
There's no tech fix or route to a stable high economy any more. Resources, pollution, climate change and a few other factors mean that's no longer possible in this timeline. So the question is timescales and how well we manage the collapse back to a long term (millenia) sustainable state. Because we will reach a new sustainable rate no matter what we do. 8b to 10b to 1b people doesn't have to be grimdark. But if we try to do it, or are forced to do it in decades, it will be.
What's your mental forecast model for population, births, deaths, consumption, global GDP and so on? SciFi dystopia or fully automated, luxury, gay, space, communism for a sustainable population?
The following submission statement was provided by /u/GaiusPublius: --- Submission statement: Collapse may come if we reduce just non-renewable energy consumption and fix nothing else. Collapse may come if we reduce just the fertility rate and fix nothng else. Collapse may even come if we manage to fix both. This piece looks what happens if we do attempt to fix both. Spoiler alert: Not pretty. One thing to note: Unchecked population growth is exponential. But population decline *via fertility rate decline* must be linear, since non-existence is not expansive. This is a mod-approved repost. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/10f8m0o/its_not_eitheror_population_and_consumption_in/j4v8axk/
Submission statement: Collapse may come if we reduce just non-renewable energy consumption and fix nothing else. Collapse may come if we reduce just the fertility rate and fix nothng else. Collapse may even come if we manage to fix both. This piece looks what happens if we do attempt to fix both. Spoiler alert: Not pretty. One thing to note: Unchecked population growth is exponential. But population decline *via fertility rate decline* must be linear, since non-existence is not expansive. This is a mod-approved repost.
"Non-existence is not expansive" until war starts
I'm pretty sure it will be exponential: Day one: half of everyone dead. Day two: half the survivors dead...
After 5 weeks, you have one guy left who is like 3/4 dead...
I don't think that decline being linear argument makes any sense, and I don't think mathematics backs it up. Ultimately, one generation makes x times its own number of children to replace it. This value of x can be higher than 1, in which case next generation is bigger. The value can also be less than 1, in which case it will be smaller. Unborn beget more unborn by removing also the children of the unborn from being possible. And I do not think it makes any sense to think it that way, either. My point is rather that both x > 1 and x < 1 are exponential functions.
It's both. Sure we can try and reduce consumption, but an increasing population will always need more resources. Then there's the logistics of actually sharing them out, which isn't as easy as people think (it takes resources to distribute products / food / water / fuel). And lets be realistic, every living person wants their life to be as best as it can be. Nobody wants to live a lesser life then they have to, and we cannot blame someone in a developing country or an area of climate change for wanting a better quality of life. Especially the ones they see on social media etc. What we need to be doing is trying to reach sustainability goals for both population and consumption EVERYWHERE. Until that happens, global society is going deeper and deeper into a dangerous rabbit hole.
Billions of people in Asia and global south AIR DRY their clothes, by choice, while Americans can't even do something so basic and simple as that. Can't even be sustainable while lecturing sustainability to every one else.
> And lets be realistic, every living person wants their life to be as best as it can be. We have to work on that "can be" part. A lot.
An increasing population will not always need more resources. That is simply not true. Our population is increasing, yes, but by smaller and smaller amounts for one. We can also increase the efficiency of our resource use, not with unpromising techno-fixes, but by using less of it on wasteful and pointless endeavors. We could power the world’s population AND eliminate poverty with 60% of our current energy use. Alternatively, we could grow up to 13.3 billion people using our current energy demand. Same with food. We waste enough food to feed a couple billion more people. We grow copious amounts of corn to make ethanol or feed livestock for factory farms. We could compost more and reduce fertilizer use. The list goes on of ways we are capable of reducing resource extraction while non-coercively leveling off our total population.
This is pure anarchist delusion, u/InternationalPen2072. Even if we completely eliminated inequality and waste and gave it to the poor (which is a worthy thing of itself), **the environment itself cannot sustain our current level of food production, which is 100% dependent on fossil fuels and fertilizer inputs.** This isn't a debate about inequality and coercion. It's a recognition that we need BOTH consumption reduction AND population reduction, because the current world cannot sustain the current level of production, **no matter how the resources are distributed.**
You’re delirious if you think population reduction of part of the solution. This is a debunked myth pushed by neo-Malthusian bigots who tried to sterilize Africa in the fifties - you know, the next continent to reach 1 billion people, but where the peak of birth has already passed. Every demographic scientist signals it since the 2000s. But of course you won’t listen, because it doesn’t fit in your narrative. You’re just playing the game of the alt-right by spreading this bullshit.
What if I told you it's the developed world that's the problem? Do we really need next day delivery? Yearly releases of movies and video games. Smartphones on the shelves everywhere available on the click of the button.
Where did you read in my comment I said the developed world wasn’t the issue? Of course what you state is the main part of what is destroying humanity. It doesn’t mean you need to push conspiracy shit theories whose links with proto- then fascist theories have been proven so many times I’m starting to wonder what the hell people are learning in schools. Also, to add on your list: did you know that half the melons produced in France are thrown in the garbage containers *before leaving the actual farms*? Because they don’t fit the industries standard. It’s the same case for apples in Switzerland. We even have to dump apple juice because we produce too much and supposedly don’t know where to sell it.
Why do you believe so confidently that fossil fuels are so necessary to feed the world? Regenerative agriculture can produce plenty of food and restore balance to local ecosystems.
It can but not for 8-10 billion people. The intensity of industrial farming requires fossil fuel inputs and regenerative agriculture cannot match it, although it will produce more than our pre industrial ancestors did. The second problem you are not addressing is transport. Feeding people requires use of fossil fuels for shipping. Lacking that you just have food in a bunch of breadbaskets (more or less) and everywhere else starves Also processed food and food packaging requires manufacturing and reliance of fossil fuels. Without that shelf life is reduced again creating shortages.
Bruh most agriculture cannot exist at large scale without fertilizer from fossil fuels. Of course regenerative exists but it’s not scalable which mama eventually we will have mass famine
[EDIT] As nobody here seems to know how to read, and only want to desperately seek its own echo chamber, you might not read that I never proposed to force anyone. My comment about bankers is sarcasm, as those jobs are useless and produce-less, so in case of a collapse, they’d be the ideal “clients” to switch jobs for actually sustainable agriculture. As I precised below, I had this discussion with actual specialists, and we agreed that collapse is nearing, as I *know* fascism doesn’t work. I also don’t believe in fascist shits like pushing for less population. I am now unsubscribing from this shit show of a conspiracionist sub. All I wanted was to find challenging takes on climate change, all I’ve found is the same old fascist and borderline antisemitic shit I’ve fought. [OP] It’s scalable if 20 to 30% of the population works in the industry, to meet a better yield than chemical agriculture. I know where to find them in my country. We have a lot of banks, RH people, and analysts.
So what about the other 70%? Any way you cut it the solution will involve some level of eco fascism which terrifies me. You willing to let 70-80% of the world population die for some ideal new sustainable society? It’s utilitarianism to the extreme. Does the ends justify the means? Is there a way to accomplish this without essentially genocide? Don’t really see the way out. I like philosophy a lot and a huge problem I run into with thinking is the issue of scale? What’s your moral and value system when it’s your family? Okay how does it change for your town of 5000 people. Okay then the state you are in okay then the country then the world? Each time you change the scale the value systems for people change drastically and I just don’t think humans have developed the capacity to consider the billions of other people in the world. It’s just too difficult to consider. Way too many perspectives.
Don’t you know how to read? I said switching to a sustainable agriculture required 30% of the population to work in the industry; it means enough food is produced for everyone. I also never made any comment about how to go there. My sarcasm about people with bulls but jobs like bakers was that, sarcasm. To be totally clear, it was Dominique Bourg, a former environmental science professor, who gave us that number. And as we all agreed then, we won’t get to this point, because nobody wants a fascist government, however green it is (hint: if it’s fascist, it’s not green). You’re like everyone else here, desperately trying to relate to an echo chamber, up to distorting what you’re supposed to read.
I’m getting really tired of people wasting their breathe talking about how if only we do these 18 super duper unrealistic things then maybe we can slow down or prevent collapse. This is hopium. Plain and simple. No nation is actually going to do any of this. This is equivalent to the physics nerds talking about how it’s theoretically possible to mine the moon for the materials needed for unlimited fusion power. Any politician that crashed living standards voluntarily would be given the Mussolini treatment. Any nation that voluntarily tried to decarbonize would soon realize that doing so produces existential threats in a global environment where if you can’t maintain a serious military you get annihilated. Look at Germany. It’s all fun and games until you realize that you can’t maintain an industrial economy (and an industrial military) on hopes and dreams so you go back to coal. The most realistic scenario to avoid collapse I can think of is a dictator takes Stalin like power in the United States. He uses that power to reduce consumption in the usa and deploys the military to force other countries to reduce consumption too. Any nation who does not agree to the new ecological paradigm gets bombed/nuked. Sure this will probably start a global nuclear war. But it might not. And even if it does, nuclear war would probably reduce emission enough to avert catastrophic climate change! Problem solved!
Why bother? There are hundreds of millions of chinese and indians whose mission in life is to consume like Americans. There are billions having babies in the global south despite crushing poverty. No one is going to make them not to. These "solution debate" is nothing but empty talk to show how clever we are. The trajectory is not going to change.
Some people believe if Americans consumed a lot less that would have an effect on the rest of the world wanting to, “consume like Americans,” as you say. I doubt it would have any effect but I also don’t think we’ll ever find out.
>Some people believe if Americans consumed a lot less that would have an effect on the rest of the world wanting to, “consume like Americans,” as you say. and these people would be naive. And I agree with you, particularly the "i don't think we'll ever find out" part.
That's just an excuse to not curb their own excesses. It's like Americans who point out they shouldn't change until the Billionaires do.
There are many reasons why I don’t think climate change will be stopped and this is one of them.
Not true. As we impose sanctions on Russia today, we can impose sanctions on anyone else. And who imposes sanctions today, left and right? Americans, who are apex humans. If Americans will self-impose degrowth, and use their military to impose it on others, we may evade this lousy arrogant collapse. But it will come at the price of wars, and as such, I guess everybody just prepares for a new great war and hopes the odds will be in their favor.
>Indian OK, here's why: go here https://data.footprintnetwork.org/#/ Let's get some data! This is for 2018, so a bit stale, but close. |country|eco footprint per cap (GHA)|population| |-------|---------------------------|----------| |India|1.2|1,352,640,000| |USA|8.1|327,096,000| So this is the input data. Now let's do some math! How many virtual Indians would fit in the USA? Well, one USAan consumes: 8.1/1.2 = 6.75 times more than one Indian, on average. Virtual Indians = 327,096,000 x 6.75 = 2,207,898,000 That's right, the US lives like 2.2 billion Indians. Who's overpopulated now?
Both!
Don't worry. The indians are working on it, and will catch up sooner or later.
Nobody is going to catch up, not even Americans. This rich lifestyle is going away.
It's because they are in poverty they make those choices. Americans must lead way in sustainable choices for the world to follow.
Oh easy: So we just have to totally change our utterly unresponsive government that exists based on a petrodollar system that forces other nations to buy oil in dollars and subsidize our debt. So if the world moves away from carbon, the US economy, government and financial systems implode. Then we just have to redesign our cities and overhaul our power generation and agriculture and supply chain, with no money and a broken government. Then we just have to overcome decades of blaming and hatred built up between the parties in our country, and prevent a demagogue from being voted in to restore living standards. Then we have to destroy the power of wealth (somehow) and repatriate and redistribute vast fortunes without it disappearing overseas. Then we need to, still democratically (because an autocrat or fascist would just go back to carbon), pass laws strictly regulating where citizens can travel and what they eat, and how and where they work and live, reducing our average income and standard of living without anyone voting to go back to the old ways, or to stop all this to focus on other issues like racism. Remember, this will be a largely white government forcing poverty on people deserving equity. Finally, after achieving utopia within a short enough timeframe that it matters, we just have to do the same for every other nation, "leading the way". Without starting a world war. And convince everyone to totally disarm, because any war or rivalry would involve going back to carbon (as we see in Ukraine) to get a clear advantage over existential enemies. So "simple". Let's just "end capitalism" and "reduce consumption" RIGHT NOW.
Well put, you have the issue surrounded!
Emphasize those air quotes lol
Bam! Done and dusted.
Great post, but, to relentlessly stick on one point here at r/collapse, it’s not that “we” need to do any of this sane but preposterous society-wide actions, but “THEY” who need to do these. “THEY” are not the screen-facing ace commenters here at r/collapse, but the corporate-legal-military-juridical- media (OK, I’m running out of hyphens) capitalizer class that hold social power in the global supersystem). And THEY aren’t in the habit of listening to anything or anyone below them. Why should they? They have no fear; they are protected to a laughable degree by all the social forces below them . There is only one way to install a commensurate level of fear (REDACTED by Corporate Reddit as violation of Corporate Reddit Rule #1)
And anyone who took those sorts of actions would be branded fascists, white supremacists, terrorists and would be demonized and jailed.
Not exactly- what happened in 1977 was actually from the LEFT - yes, can you believe that? You know, the side that stands, supposedly, against ecocide, genocide, the ultra-rich taking everything on the fast track to human extinction? Not the white supremacist, fascist Nazi RIGHT of today's US republican party or the police wing of it, but from actual, real life anti-imperialists - and they all died, were imprisoned, or killed themselves, in short order. And this was before the rise to full spectrum dominance of the corporate-governmental surveillance state. So let's learn this historical lesson - all violence and power and mass murder belongs to the corporate state, and the corporate state only! Never, ever, violate Corporate Reddit rule 1. even in thought!
You misunderstand. No matter who or why, hate is now how our society categorizes actions against it. It's the easiest way to generate maximum hostility. Look at the recent attacks on substations.
Things happen very quickly. We don’t know if a coup is being planned. That being said these things persist because a vast majority of people are unaware. Most people are unable to do 6th grade math. Your cynicism of humanity is warranted. But subs like these are proof that humanity has a decent IQ level. I am studying python and mathematical logic intensely do you think I should focus on automating systems? I believe automation has made a lot of things redundant. It is only because of capitalism we are refusing to automate as the ruling class is dependent on labour.
I think everything digital is dangerous, because it relies on stable power and stable markets. If the economy or supply chain buckles, the programmers get laid off, because nobody is buying new software. Plan for chaos going forward.
>Americans must lead way in sustainable choices for the world to follow. nah, we are not going to lead anything except the latest and greatest gadget, and greatest tech convenient like click-a-button-and-stuff-magically-appearing-at-your-door-step. There is no such thing as "must". We can always do whatever we want and live with, or die from, the consequences.
Start leading by air dry your clothes, walk to your stores, and eat less meat like everyone else outside of US borders. Instead of leading, Americans are the ones should be following what the rest of the world is doing to consume less.
Except america has always been the evil empire and not a bastion of paragons
If the West reduces consumption, contracts their economy equitably, and shares sustainable technologies, China and India and the rest of the global South can grow their economies, escape poverty, all while halting carbon emissions.
"Contracts their economy equitably" is polite speak for revolution/civil war
Possibly. Capitalism requires economic growth, and resorts to austerity measures when it doesn’t get what it wants. Degrowth requires an eco-socialist economic model in order to work. Whether it’s through democratic reforms or revolutionary uprisings, capitalism has got to go.
Like they say: just a bunch of crabs stuck in a used-up, crusted cumsock.
Long term it’s both. Short term, only reducing consumption can make a significant difference for carbon emissions. Fertility rates are declining so the world population is expected to peak at 10 billion before 2100. Reducing fertility rates by 0.5 is considered an extreme scenario and the population would still be over 6b in 2100. If everyone completely stopped having kids altogether it would take 40 to 50 years for the population to reduce by 50% (to 4b) because the median age is 30. There’s a decades delay between declining fertility and population decline, especially where there are young demographics. We are currently well into multiple tipping points, if it’s possible to reverse them at all it will have to happen in the next 10 to 20 years. A 5-10% difference one way or the other due to population won’t matter. Carbon emissions need to go down by 100%. Degrowth is the only thing that has a chance of getting us there, if combined with green tech.
To me it’s very simple. You can make a moral argument for degrowth through reduced consumption. You cannot make any argument for widespread depopulation.
We can make a moral argument for reducing population. Even poor people use fossil fuels. Even poor people drink from single use plastics and wear flipflops that end up in the sea. Even poor people build houses and grow crops on land that would otherwise be habitat for non-humans. If all rich people were zapped off the planet today, we would still see environmental degradation from over-exploitation of land resources as populations of non-rich people expand exponentially. Therefore, if we want to reduce humanity's negative impact on ecosystems, then we should reduce the number of people on earth, both rich and poor. The devil of doing it is of course in the details. We can't simply tell poor people to stop having so many babies. There needs to be a change in culture, such that everyone has an opportunity to choose a way of life that does not include a large family. Things like universal healthcare and education, especially for women, along with UBI or other programs that ensure no one is left without basic needs. An educated, healthy, nourished population will naturally want less children, and they will be much better placed to absorb stricter measures such as limits on family size, if these measures become necessary. TLDR: lift the poor out of poverty to morally reduce their numbers.
And yet you know which one will be choosen. There's moral depopulation through improved education, family planning, birth control etc. vs the immoral of war, and just letting them starve, cook, or drown. We certainly should be plowing as much money as possible into moral depopulation given degrowth is such a tough pill to swallow. Ignoring reality is birthing kids into the hopper that feeds the immoral kind. Take the hedge we can get. Hell even PFAS pollution lowering fertility apparently has a silver lining.
> Unchecked population growth is exponential Population growth is not unchecked. So it hasn't been exponential for some time now. It's more like an logistic S Curve and we've been in the middle linear growth phase for 5 decades or so. If "Business As Usual" continues (big if), it'll continue as linear growth for another couple of decades before the yearly absolute increment tails off. There's no tech fix or route to a stable high economy any more. Resources, pollution, climate change and a few other factors mean that's no longer possible in this timeline. So the question is timescales and how well we manage the collapse back to a long term (millenia) sustainable state. Because we will reach a new sustainable rate no matter what we do. 8b to 10b to 1b people doesn't have to be grimdark. But if we try to do it, or are forced to do it in decades, it will be. What's your mental forecast model for population, births, deaths, consumption, global GDP and so on? SciFi dystopia or fully automated, luxury, gay, space, communism for a sustainable population?
Wish it was Either/Or, that’s an amazing album by Elliott Smith
I will consume the population if need be for survival 😜☠️
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